Salt Lake City wants a Major League Baseball team. Really, they’re not joking.

I understand that ever since the Jazz moved from New Orleans to Salt Lake City in 1979, the team has been quite successful and has drawn good crowds. However, that just means they’ve been able to almost fill Vivint Arena, which seats 18,306 for basketball, on a regular basis for 41 home games each season. This season, the Jazz finished 13th in the NBA with an average attendance of 18,206.

Supporting a MLB team will require trying to fill a 30,000 seat stadium for 81 home games per season. That’s a big difference.

Currently, Salt Lake City is home to the Triple-A Bees, an affiliate of the Angels, who play in the Pacific Coast League. The team plays in Smith’s Ballpark, with a capacity of 15,400. In 2022, the Bees averaged 5,873, across 74 home games.

In comparison, the Double-A Tulsa Drillers averaged 5,495 fans per game in 2022. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of Salt Lake County in July of 2022, was 1,186,257. At that same time, Tulsa County’s population was listed as 677,358.

According to FORBES magazine;  The reason to take the Salt Lake effort as serious centers on the Miller family and the Larry H. Miller Company as the driver. Larry Miller owned the Utah Jazz, and since his death, Gail Miller has been the matriarch of the enterprise. Based on the Forbes valuations, she has a net worth of $4 billion, some of which was gained through the Jazz sale that came in just shy of $2 billion.

That’s all fine and dandy, but there are other cities and ownership groups who have lobbied long and hard for a Major League Baseball franchise a lot longer than Salt Lake City, and many of them seem to have a much better case to be made, in my opinion.

Portland, Nashville, Las Vegas and Montreal are the top cities who have shown interest in being home to an MLB team over the past several years, and all of them should be seriously considered; even before Salt Lake City.

First, however, Major League Baseball needs to decide what to do with two struggling franchises that play in worn out ballparks; the Oakland Athletics and the Tampa Bay Rays. Both of these teams have been trying for years to secure a new stadium deal in their city, and only one of the teams seems to finally have done that. Both teams have been rumored to be on the move; the A’s to Las Vegas, and the Rays to Montreal.

The Tampa Bay Rays announced in January, a new ballpark for the team will be built near the current one, in St. Petersburg, Florida, as part of a massive redevelopment project that also includes affordable housing, office space and retail in what was once a thriving Black neighborhood. Mayor Ken Welch of St. Petersburg, chose a partnership between the Rays and the Houston-based Hines development company from among four proposals to transform an 86-acre downtown site where Tropicana Field now sits. Welch said the plan should keep the Rays in St. Petersburg for the long term.

Okay, so maybe the Rays won’t be moving to Montreal when their lease at Tropicana Field runs out at the end of the 2027 season, but what about the A’s?

Just this past Sunday, as the Oakland A’s were celebrating the anniversary of their 1973 World Series Championship team, a star from that team, Reggie Jackson, who at one point wanted to purchase the A’s from former owners Steve Schott and Ken Hofmann, said he believes the team will have no choice but to leave the East Bay in the coming years because of low revenue issues created by their decaying 55-year-old stadium.

“No, they’re not going to have a team here,” Jackson said. “You can’t play with three, four, five, six thousand people in the stands. You have no revenues here. What’s the signage look like? You’ve got to have revenue.”

The A’s averaged 9,973 per game last season after the organization hiked season ticket prices and gutted the roster, trading or letting walk several of its best players that were set for dramatic pay increases.

On Saturday, the New York Mets’ television announcers had a last-minute change to their broadcast position in Oakland’s Ring Central Coliseum. SNY’s Gary Cohen and Ron Darling called the game between the Mets and Athletics from a different booth because a possum “makes a home” in the visitors’ broadcast booth.

So, if Salt Lake City wants a team, now is the perfect time to make a push for bringing the A’s to the Utah Valley, before the Athletics are forced by a possum (and low attendance) to find a new home in Portland or Las Vegas.

TULSA BEACON RADIO

My guest this week on the “Tulsa Beacon” radio show will be author and speaker Jim Whitt. We’ll talk about discovering your purpose and how to lead a business with purpose. The show airs on Saturday at 12:00 p.m. CST on 970am KCFO.